Ahoy, me hearties! Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville joins the Doctor and Amy for a Doctor Who pirate adventure on BBC1 on Saturday, May 7... Hugh Bonneville guest stars in the third episode of the latest series of Doctor Who, entitled The Curse of the Black Spot, as troubled pirate Captain Avery, the commander of a 17th-century pirate ship which has been becalmed and whose crew are rapidly being depleted. TV&Satellite Week magazine caught up with the Downton Abbey star to find out more... Did you always want to be in Doctor Who? “Oh, yes! Who doesn’t? I’ve been begging them for years, ever since it was re-booted. Jon Pertwee was the reason I hid behind the sofa on a Saturday afternoon, after Final Score. For a 47-year-old boy to get to leap around the TARDIS was great fun and was a real thrill to walk onto that set.” And did you always want to play a pirate? “Again, which boy doesn’t? The most fun was putting together the costume and desperately trying not to look like Johnny Depp, because he’s cornered the market in pirates. We made our own style for my character, Captain Avery, though, and we consciously avoided as many clichés as possible. There is no eye patch, no parrot and no Cornish accent, but the beard, which was all my own work, was quite impressive. The best thing, though, was no stiff collars. I made it very clear I wanted an open-necked shirt. Although the Downton shirts are beautifully made, so they’re not as bad as some I’ve worn.” How would you describe Captain Avery? “He’s a pirate wanted on the high seas for his nefarious deeds because he and his crew have been plundering Spanish ships. All is not as it seems onboard the ship, though, thanks to Lily Cole who plays a mythical creature from the sea, the Siren, so the Doctor and his team land his TARDIS and come and see what’s going on." How does Avery get on with the Doctor? “Inevitably, he makes him walk the plank because he has invaded the ship with this strange blue box and Avery doesn’t like that kind of thing. What happens next remains to be seen, but Avery and the Doctor end up having a working arrangement.” So does Avery learn the error of his ways? “Well, who wouldn’t learn from a Time Lord? He has experienced everything. Those who the Doctor visits and bestows his magic dust upon always end up changed in some way.” How dark is this episode? “It’s a genuine rollercoaster, quite funny in parts, quite touching in parts, but it’s pretty scary, there are definitely some very unsettling elements in it and it really is life-and-death stuff. There’s a lot about people coming to terms with their destiny, which is a big theme in this series. I know this was one of Matt Smith’s favourite scripts and he said that it was wonderfully rich in tone. That’s the great strength of Doctor Who; it can ebb and flow between really good high camp comedy and quite dark and deep themes because the canvas is so broad.” Did you get to do much fighting? “I left all the fight scenes to Karen Gillan, who plays Amy. She does all the biffing and bashing and swashbuckling, and does a fantastic job of it. It’s great that the girls get to do all the fighting these days. There is plenty of action though and the three nights we filmed in Cornwall culminated in this fantastic storm sequence. There’s this great battering of the ship by wind and rain, done by these amazing jet machines, so there was a bit of climbing the rigging then.” Was it fun going in the TARDIS? “When I first arrived down in Cardiff, the director said, ‘I know what you want to do first’, and they took me into the TARDIS. It’s an amazing set and what impresses me is the attention to detail because every little item on the control decks is incredibly detailed. Matt, of course, knows what every single little button and gadget does, whereas I just got my fingers in a muddle and didn’t know what the heck I was doing. Luckily there are certain things on the TARDIS panel that make Avery feel at home, like compasses and navigation tools.” Did filming live up to your expectations? “It was even more exciting. It’s amazing how this show has once again caught the imagination of so many different people and all age ranges. When we were filming in Cornwall at night there would be a few hundred people and then by about 10 or 11pm it would have whittled down, but still at 1am there was one family there, with the dad holding his child’s hand, saying ‘My son doesn’t want to go’. It’s the grown-ups just as much as the kids who are captivated by Doctor Who. It’s wonderful that it’s regenerated itself again to become such a loved thing.” Is your nine-year-old son excited about you doing Doctor Who? “Sort of, although to be honest he hasn’t been watching them all as there were a couple of episodes last year which caused some sleepless nights. It was the Weeping Angels. They’re such a brilliant idea, because we’ve all got that sense of things coming to life and moving behind us, but it’s quite a big, dark concept. I’ve bought the box set, so I think we will start watching them all, now he’s a bit more fine about these things.” You are now back filming Downton Abbey. How’s it going? “It’s great. It was strange the first day back, stepping back into the same costumes in the same location with the same actors. It felt like we’d only been there yesterday, even though it had been about eight months since we were last there. A lot has changed, too. The public has embraced the show in a way that none of us ever predicted and it’s very gratifying. Of course, that means the stakes are higher, but the new scripts are as good if not better than the first series. There are some great adventures on the way with new characters, twists and turns. It's also set in the First World War, so the weight of that wears down on the house, which becomes a convalescent home at one point, so there’s a whole new atmosphere.” Are you still amazed at how well it did? “Yes, especially by the range of ages of people who watched it. I never anticipated young people would enjoy it. I thought it was going to be a grown-up thing, but to have 10 and 11-year-olds coming up and asking me about what happens next week was incredible. It genuinely became a Sunday-night fixture for families. There’s a sense of ownership now for the country and these watercooler shows are few and far between. The reaction from abroad has been great, too. You think you are doing something which is very parochial and very English and nobody will get it, but the quality of the writing means that everyone can understand the themes and the way these characters interact.”
